Web technology advice

[dprocket]

I'm hoping someone here can give me some web technology advice. I'm fairly technical, but don't consider my self a hard core coder as I am completely self taught. With that in mind, I'd consider advice that anyone has, if it is easy enough to learn on my own with resources available on the web.

I have a class that I teach that I would like to develop web sites for. Basically, I want a way to mass produce multiple websites for different students. So, student A would have their own website running on a subdomain that I have and student B would have their own website running the a subdomain. Each would have different content and color schemes, but the underlying generation process would be uniform. Right now, I am thinking that I'd like to enter information about each site (each student) into an XML file which would be standard across my entire student base. Then, I would just read each XML file to produce the web page. So, one value in the XML file may be that the color scheme is Red, therefore the web page would use the red banner across the top.

Does anyone have any ideas of what technology would be best for me to learn for this type of project? I've experienced with basic XSL/XPath conversions. I also have read a little about PHP, but I'm interested in anyone's suggestions. Thanks! I'll read replies with great interest. If anyone needs more info, let me know.

 

[SuepaFly]

What do you want these websites to do? Do the kids customize it and put up the content or is it like a focal point for students to get your syllabus and stuff?

 

[dprocket]

Well, the idea is that they will all be personalized. So one can have whatever content they want (within certain parameters). It's not really a focal point to get syllabus and stuff because I'll have my own site for that. It be kind of something like this:

class site: ourclassroom dot com

student site: studentA dot ourclassroom dot com (this site has a picture of the student and their dog)

student site: studentB dot ourclassroom dot com (this site has a picture of the student and a cartoon picture)

Keep in mind, it'd like to dynamicaly generate these things as it's not something the students themselves will be editing/working on directly.

 

[Zucarita9000]

Yes, XML is a good choice. You can create several templates with HTML and CSS and put the students info on XML files, and the load them into the pages. I'm a web designer myself, so if you need advice on design/layout I'm here to help.

 

[dprocket]

Thanks for the response. Basically, as far as I have gotten is taking data out of some simple XML files and converting them to HTML. Where I see myself running into a few problems is in the ability to "nest" som formatting options into the XML files. I'm not real good yet with CSS or XSL, so that may just be my problem.

BTW, when you say "put the students info on XML files, and the load them into the pages", what would you suggest using to "load them into the pages"? Sorry if this is a dumb question, but remember I'm just getting my feet wet on this. Thanks!